This invention is in the field of digital image acquisition, manipulation, and storage.
Every photographer knows the frustration of "just missing" a wonderful shot. All too often, the camera's shutter is tripped after the most exciting moment of the on-going action has passed. Despite a great deal of inventive effort, this problem has not been solved to the full satisfaction of photographers.
Many known still cameras can be equipped with motorized film drives, which enable the camera to take a series of photographs after the camera's shutter has been tripped, the drive automatically advancing the film and tripping the shutter at a preset rate for a preset number of pictures. Although such cameras and drive units allow the photographer to take a larger number of photographs in a given time than could be taken by manually tripping the shutter for each photograph, the problem of missing the "high point" of the action still remains, as the photographer only obtains images after the shutter has been tripped. Events occurring before the shutter was tripped escape capture. Tripping the shutter in anticipation of an event is possible, but not without the risk that the anticipated event will not occur and that the film so used will be wasted.
A video camera can be used to film and store an entire event, with post-capture editing finding and storing those particular images the photographer wishes to save. Although this use of a video camera can result in a series of video frames containing the desired image, extensive editing is required to find the desired image, separate it, and store it as a separate digital image. Although several video cameras have an indexing capability which allows the photographer to place a cuing mark on the videotape, indicating a moment of particular interest, the mark is still placed on the tape after the interesting event has occurred. It therefore merely reduces the time needed to find the desired image without eliminating the need for editing to select and save the image.